Extending the reach of M2M and IoT

Machine to machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to generate joules of heat in these winter months. Last month, M2M platforms from Telefónica and the Global M2M Association extended their reach and capabilities, accelerating the arrival of ubiquitous M2M.and IoT services. 

In case you didn't know, the Global M2M Association (GMA) is a cooperation of six international tier-one operators (Deutsche Telekom, Orange, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile, Bell Canada and SoftBank) in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market. The group is promoting a single consolidated global M2M offering under the bill "One platform, One SIM, One experience." Gemalto and Ericsson are key technology providers for the GMA's initiative. 

Amdocs's mobile money win in Norway

Amdocs scored a significant win with its mobile money solution this week. Norway's three leading operators, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Tele2, tapped Amdocs to support their Strex joint venture for mobile payments. Amdocs will deploy the solution on a public cloud and manage Strex's daily operations under a multi-year managed services contract.

The solution consolidates the operators’ multiple SMS-based payment systems into one, enabling Strex to offer their users a single mobile wallet with which they can pay for any digital or physical good or service, send money to friends and family and pay bills using either SMS, Web, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) or via a mobile app. Strex users can load their mobile wallet from their bank account, credit card or debit card, or use their carrier bill for mobile purchases.

"Mobile financial services are already very popular in Norway, with Strex handling more than 75 million SMS-based payment transactions annually,” said Hege Kosberg, Chief Executive Officer of Strex. “Once we launch our single mobile wallet, we will be able to offer our customers the most convenient shopping experience with a wide choice of funding and payment options, as well as provide merchants with a state-of-the-art platform for marketing their goods with integrated loyalty programs.”

3G: Not dead yet

With so much buzz about LTE, LTE-A, and 5G, it's easy to forget that innovation is still occurring in 3G. Huawei and Qualcomm, for instance, just ratcheted up 3G speeds in Thailand to 63mbps. This is significantly faster than the 4G speeds in many major markets. The enabling technology is the same we see in LTE-A: carrier aggregation.  

In early February, Huawei, Qualcomm and Thailand AIS, successfully tested the 3-Carrier High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (3C-HSDPA) and the Dual-Carrier High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (DC-HSUPA) on a commercial network in Bangkok. The peak rate of the 3G network increased to 63 Mbps (downlink) and 11Mbps (uplink). Thailand AIS has become the first mobile operator to successfully test the world’s fastest 3G technology in Southeast Asia.

Mobile privacy 

Is your phone spying on you? It very well could be, and this time it's not the NSA -- new research from Alcatel-Lucent's Motive Security Labs warns that 16 million mobile devices are infected by malicious software secretly spying on users, stealing confidential information and pilfering data plans. The report reveals a trove of information related to mobile security that should inform personal and workplace mobile data decisions.

At the same time, recent revelations by investigative journalists indicate that government agencies may have already hacked the encryption keys that are used by more than 400 mobile operators globally. Allegedly the NSA and its UK counterpart, the GCHQ, hacked into Gemalto in order to snag the encryption keys in SIM cards. These SIM cards protect the privacy of billions of users, so the story has legs. Gemalto , however, believes the hackers were not able to make off with the keys to the kingdom. The company responded with a very detailed report of the activity in a press release:

"While the intrusions...were serious, sophisticated attacks, nothing was detected in other parts of our network," the report read. "No breaches were found in the infrastructure running our SIM activity or in other parts of the secure network which manage our other products such as banking cards, ID cards or electronic passports. Each of these networks is isolated from one another and they are not connected to external networks."

Look into the crystal ball

Two recent Pipeline predictions have come to pass: Verizon has sold off a bundle of towers and legacy wireline assets, and BT has confirmed the purchase of EE from Deutsche Telekom and Orange for $19 billion. For Verizon, the sale means an influx of needed capital and an enhanced focus on LTE-A and FiOS. For BT, it's all about the quad-play and the synergies it will create with a well-developed mobile arm -- EE reaches nearly 8 million customers with its 4G network. Since we are on a roll, I'll predict that Mobile World Congress will be dominated by four technologies: 5G, SDN, NFV, and IoT.